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Fairly OddParents and New Character Syndrome
So, I've decided to start a journal series where I go further in depth with one particular topic brought up in any given review of mine. It's not so much to talk about said episode, but said topic that that review introduces. Both admirables and atrocities and even MLP reviews may have a bigger topic to talk about, but I can't say that EVERY single review will have an expanded topic. Sometimes it'll be serious topics, like One Coarse Meal's tangential topic of when jokes go too far. Sometimes it won't be as serious, like following Return of Slade's logic is how the dark age of animation began, and even back then people did those things out of necessity and not inherent laziness. Sometimes, yeah, what I talk about will be tangentially related, like Doggy Poo's when is an idea dead on arrival? Sometimes these will cover multiple topics. Today, we're talking about Fairly OddPet, Fairly Oddbaby, whatever the hell their anti-version's introduction episodes where... and my future review of season 10's opener. Where Fairly OddParents introduces another new character. Yes, you heard that right. Timmy Turner is getting a new neighbor, Chloe Carmichael. And, for the first episode at least, Timmy Turner must share his Fairy godparents with her. Let's ignore the fact that they already did this plot when Timmy shared his Godparents with Tootie. Let's even ignore that this goes against every bit of continuity/rules that the show has established from its inception. Let's talk about when you should add a new main character. I'm not talking about side characters, extras, etc. A bonafide new character. Let's start with saying that the first season is an exception to what I'm going to say in the rest of this post. In the first season, you're supposed to introduce as many new characters as possible and give them a little bit of depth so you don't have the purported problem of not having enough characters to bounce off of in later seasons. You got your main character, their friends, their family, the neighbors, all of their friends (or enemies), the school people, and general antagonists. And Fairly OddParents did this well enough in its early seasons. The general rule to adding new main characters in an ongoing show (after season 1 or 2) is... don't. There are exceptions and stuff. Unfortunately most of the exceptions do not apply to animation. For one example, a chance for a new character in a live action show comes about when an actor moves on, gets fired, or dies. In animation, one character can be voiced by multiple different people and the general audience won't know, unless it's someone who had been doing it for a very long time like Marcia Wallace with Edna Krabappel. And audiences generally don't like it when you kill a character off, for this specific reason. Think to Maude, also from the Simpsons. Let's see, when MLP introduced new characters with Cadence and Shining Armor, they were hated by a certain subset and ignored by most others. You see, not even toy-based cartoons get away with doing this. It also looks like an act of desperation. Believe it or not, the best way to add new main characters to your show is with NO FANFARE. Start them out as a one-off extra. Have them recur here and there, pull it in slowly. That tends to get the best reaction. It doesn't make the audience feel like something is slammed in their face. The other exception is to have a narrative-based show like Avatar, where more characters are supposed to be introduced as things go along. Even then, it's only to an extent. Let's talk about Fairly OddParents specifically. Adding a new main character every season like this is a clear-cut sign of being on life-support. FOP is a pretty bad example of this. Let me put it this way, by now, with all of their extra characters they'd have the full cast for an entirely new show. The reason people have used for defending these new characters is that it gives the show more potential, more to work with. Unfortunately, that excuse doesn't work very well. Here's what the other new characters tell me, the audience member: Anti-Poof: Poof, as a character on his own, is not enough to build onto the show. We should have developed him more in conception before we desperately added him. Sparky: Anti-Poof, as a character on his own, is not enough to build onto the show. We should have developed him more in conception before we desperately added him. Anti-Sparky: Sparky, as a character on his own, is not enough to build onto the show. We should have developed him more in conception before we desperately added him. Chloe: Anti-Sparky, as a character on his own, is not enough to build onto the show. We should have developed him more in conception before we desperately added him. All of these characters were added at the back-end of Flanderization. They were each given only one trait to really work with. Poof could do absolutely nothing, except look cute, cause trouble, and make poop jokes. That's one episode potential. Literally one episode. Anti-Poof is just... another fucking anti-fairy. Sparky is... well, he's Poochy from the Simpsons. Nothing else. Anti-Sparky I don't even care. According to Nickelodeon, Chloe is “an enthusiastic, funny and over-achieving little girl who Timmy will have to share his fairies with.” It sounds like a pitch to sell me a flanderized Lisa Simpson. Oh yeah, then there's Fairly Odd Parents' gender-thing. That's going to be fun. It's as if the under-achieving boy paired with the over-achieving girl hasn't been pounded into the dust. I thought being over-achieving was AJ's job. Enthusiastic was Chester's job. And I'm sure they used funny to describe Sparky too. Fairly Odd Parents doesn't even have the money excuse, why is it still running? Each time you add a new main character, it devalues the previous ones. And since Poof, all of these new characters had no, or negative value to begin with. Category:Miscellaneous